


how much was mine to keep

by kaydeefalls



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Steve Rogers, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, Peggy has agency too, Polyamorous Character, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Canon Fix-It, Time Travel, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 15:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18968125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaydeefalls/pseuds/kaydeefalls
Summary: Peggy's face in the compass, always pointing the way to true north, and Steve has long since lost any other sense of direction. Bucky knows what he's gonna do with the time machine even before Steve does, probably. He can't blame him.The post-Endgame fix-it in which Bucky gets a time machine of his own, Steve gets a chance to process his trauma, and Peggy gets a say in the matter, too.





	how much was mine to keep

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone's got their own hot take on how to process the ending of Endgame. Here's mine. Happy Memorial Day.

> And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.  
>  \- _Slaughterhouse-Five_ , Kurt Vonnegut

Once, during the (first) war, back when Bucky was still Sergeant Barnes, the Commandos had a mission outside of Nijmegen that went south hard and fast. It was a few weeks after the failure of Market Garden, so the brass were still twitchy about the Netherlands. And sure enough, there must've been a HYDRA mole in the Dutch Resistance, because everything went to shit within hours of their arrival. Dum-Dum got a bullet through the ass for his troubles, which would've been hilarious under any other circumstances, but they just barely got out of the HYDRA base with their lives while toting his heavy carcass along. And Steve found out the hard way that while the shield could, in fact, stop a round from a tank, it still threw him fifty feet into a stone wall and landed him a nasty concussion that even the serum needed a minute to fix up. Fortunately, Gabe managed to get a radio message out in time, and Peggy Carter arrived a day later with the cavalry to extract them to an Allied base in Belgium. But still, that easily ranked as one of Bucky's top five worst missions ever.

For a minute there, he hadn't been sure Steve would get up again.

While Steve and Dum-Dum were restricted to the medical tent for observation -- both likely giving the medics seven kinds of hell about it -- and the rest of the Commandos went out to tear through the local drinking establishments in retaliation, Peggy pulled Bucky aside.

"We've identified the HYDRA mole," she said, with a knife-slash of a smile. "His name is Jan Kuipers. Another team brought him in while I was saving your sorry hides. Care to take a quick trip across the river with me?"

That was where they were keeping prisoners. Most were easy enough to handle, but HYDRA mooks were a special case. No one had even tried questioning this one, Peggy told him.

"We've lost too many of these bastards to those damned cyanide capsules. But Kuipers has information we need." Her eyes were hard. "Do I make myself clear, Sergeant Barnes?"

Bucky thought about Steve's still, white face after the tank shell had thrown him, and pulled his favorite knife out of his boot. "Crystal."

It was messy and ugly and awful. And Peggy got her information.

Afterwards, she found him sitting at the river's edge, carefully and methodically cleaning his blade. She waited until he gave it one final assessment and, nodding to himself, resheathed it. Then she passed him her lit cigarette. He accepted it and took a long drag. It blunted the sharp edges of the world, at least a little bit.

"You gonna tell Steve?" he finally asked, looking up at her. Somehow, her lipstick was still pristine. She didn't have a single hair out of place. "How we got your intel?"

She shrugged, unladylike. "Are you?"

Bucky didn't say anything, which he guessed was all the answer she needed.

"Steve prefers to fight honorably, and I love him for it," Peggy said. "But sometimes, one has to cheat to win. By any means necessary." She sighed. "That's what you and I are here for, I suppose. To do the things Captain America can't."

"He could, though," Bucky said quietly. "He would. If he had to."

Peggy gave him a crooked smile. She ran her hand through his hair once, then rested it on his crown for just a moment, like a benediction. "Then let's make sure he never has to."

* * *

Steve still has that compass with Peggy's photo. Bucky sees it once, in Wakanda, before Thanos's army arrives. Steve quickly tucks it away into some pocket in his suit, and neither of them mentions it.

Bucky's glad of it, though. Feels like some kinda good omen, that the damn thing has survived this long, against all the odds. Like Peggy is still here, in a way, keeping an eye out for her best guy.

God knows Steve can use all the help he can get.

* * *

The Snap doesn't mean much to Bucky. All he knows is one minute Thanos is kicking twelve kinds of crap out of them and the next he's gone, and there's a strange crawling sensation on Bucky's skin and he looks up to see Steve's horrified face, and then --

And then he's back on that empty battlefield, with Sam and Wanda and half an army of very confused Wakandans, but no Steve in sight. 

A few minutes later, the strange magician shows up and gives them the world's most confusing sitrep, which Bucky only half hears. That guy's goatee is somehow more insufferable than Tony Stark's, which frankly Bucky would not have thought possible but there it is. Also, _magic_ , what the hell?

And then they're fighting for their lives against Thanos and his army, _again_ , or rather still, like some kind of fucked up time loop -- which, for all Bucky understands how the Infinity Stones work, it might well be. This time, though, they win.

More or less.

That's when the physical reality of the Snap starts to register. Because it's been _five years_. Five years meant nothing to the Winter Soldier -- just another very cold nap -- and it doesn't really bother Bucky much at first, either, except in the haunted faces of the survivors. Bucky recognizes that kind of trauma instinctively, reflexively.

Steve gives him a quick hug on the battlefield, after it's over, but he can't quite meet Bucky's eyes.

There are things Captain America shouldn't have to do. Sometime in the past five years, Bucky thinks, Steve has done them.

* * *

Peggy's face in the compass, always pointing the way to true north, and Steve has long since lost any other sense of direction. Bucky knows what he's gonna do with the time machine even before Steve does, probably.

He can't blame him.

* * *

After Steve had gone rogue from the Avengers for him, when they'd been packed onto T'Challa's jet bound for Wakanda -- to hide from Tony Stark's righteous wrath, from the world's condemnation, from the demons still lurking in Bucky's skull -- Bucky did something stupid.

He was filthy and bruised and aching in twelve different places, and Steve didn't look much better. They managed to clean off the worst of the grime and blood in the jet's tiny bathroom, and stripped off their outer gear, but that was the best they'd get until landing in Wakanda. And after that, who the hell even knew?

T'Challa was up in front with his...bodyguard, or whoever she was. As though that guy needed any help defending himself; he'd given Bucky one hell of a fight back in Bucharest. But he was on their side now, apparently, so whatever.

Point was, they had some modicum of privacy, and Steve was slumped in a seat looking completely wrecked, and Bucky just...couldn't, anymore.

His brain was still a mess, and there were all kinds of fucked up triggers still lurking in its depths, and now all of Bucky's old memories and fears and desires were making a cacophonous roar in his head and through his blood, and fuck, Howard Stark's son had nearly just killed them both.

If Steve hadn't been there, Bucky probably would've let him.

"It can't have been worth it," Bucky said hollowly, slumping into the seat beside him. "Steve, Christ, I'm sorry, I'm not--"

"Don't you dare." Steve gripped his shoulder -- his good shoulder, not the shorn off metal wreckage of the other one -- and gave it a shake. "Don't even try to tell me you're not worth it again, Buck, you gotta know--"

All at once Bucky was back in 1943, with Steve's desperate face staring at him across the burning factory; he was in Brooklyn in '38, pulling Steve out of the wreckage of another fistfight; he was watching him drop his shield from the helicarrier because he just couldn't bear to fight one goddamn minute longer, not if it meant fighting _Bucky_ , some asshole the Winter Soldier could barely even remember except in glass-shard fragments.

Bucky had other memories, too, the kind neither of them ever talked about now. Maybe that was why he took Steve's bruised face in his hand and kissed him hard, like he hadn't in more than seventy goddamn years.

Steve made an awful, keening noise in the back of his throat and basically clambered over the armrest to straddle Bucky's lap, kissing him back messily, painfully. Bucky remembered the way he'd awkwardly locked lips with that pretty blonde CIA agent, the one who'd helped them get away; it had looked nothing like this felt. He ought to feel bad about it, maybe -- she'd seemed nice and very competent, the sort of gal he would've shoved Steve at back in the day. But she hadn't come with them, and Steve was a fugitive now, so fuck it: Bucky was a selfish bastard and he'd take what he could get.

He always had.

Maybe he'd already known, then, that it was probably his last chance. When they landed in Wakanda, Bucky had immediately been whisked away into Shuri's lab, and chose to go back into cryo for everyone's sake, to keep the Winter Soldier locked away from the world until his brain could be sorted out. He and Steve never got another private moment together. And then the battle against Thanos, and then the Snap, and then...five years.

No, Bucky can't blame Steve at all.

* * *

There's an old man sitting on a bench by the lake, and Bucky's not ready to look him in the eye yet, any more than Steve could after Thanos. So he sends Sam on ahead of him.

Thank fucking Christ for Sam, anyway. Because if Steve had ever tried to pass the damn shield on to Bucky, Bucky would've shoved that indestructible vibranium somewhere the sun don't shine.

Eventually, though, Sam makes his way back up to the now-defunct time travel platform. The shield is slung over his shoulder like it's always been his. Looks good on him, Bucky thinks, not that he'll ever admit it aloud.

"Your turn with Grandpa Steve," Sam says, grinning.

"I don't like you," Bucky informs him. But he goes down to the lake and stands awkwardly next to the bench, staring out at the water.

He still can't look this Steve in the eye.

"Hey, Buck," Steve says softly. His voice is...wrong, but it's still _Steve_. And, really -- if his Steve had successfully landed the Valkyrie and gone home to marry Peggy and lived through the 20th century properly, like he was supposed to, and then somehow still found the Winter Soldier in 2014...he'd have probably looked like this. Sounded like this. And Bucky wouldn't have loved him any less.

But that Steve wouldn't have _chosen_ to live a full, long life without Bucky. This one did. Bucky hopes the sting of it will fade in time, but right now, _fuck_ if it doesn't settle cold and sharp between his ribs.

"Hey," Bucky replies, shoving his hands into his pockets. "Wasn't sure you'd be coming back at all."

"Tell you the truth, I don't remember there being much of a plan." Steve's voice is wry. "I'd just had a rough few years. Wasn't exactly thinking too clearly."

Bucky just nods. He knows the feeling.

"I am sorry, though," Steve adds. "For how I left. That wasn't fair to you."

He's not sure how to respond to that. It's only been, what, five minutes for him? For this Steve, it's been...decades. A lifetime. The last thing Bucky wants is to begrudge him anything, no matter how raw it still feels. So instead he says, "You saved the world, Steve. I think you're allowed to be a little selfish. God knows if anyone deserves it, it's you." Finally, he forces himself to look at Steve properly, to meet his gaze straight on. He wants to make sure Steve knows he means it. "I'm real glad you got the life you always wanted, pal. I can't even tell you how much."

Steve's blue eyes are a little cloudy now, but still so warm. It twists at something in Bucky's chest. "I did," he says.

Bucky clears his throat. "And Peggy?"

"Peggy," Steve repeats, his voice rich and fond. Christ, he must have loved her _so much_. "Peggy always knew how to live life to its fullest, and no regrets." There's a strange little half-smile playing across his weathered face, one Bucky's not sure how to read. "Did I ever tell you what Peggy said, after you fell from the train?"

Bucky shakes his head mutely. He's never wanted to think on what Steve must've gone through right after that. Knows what _he'd_ have done, if their roles had been reversed, and it sure ain't pretty.

"She told me, _allow Barnes the dignity of his choice. He damn well must have thought you were worth it._ "

"You were," Bucky says hoarsely. He's not sure why Steve's bringing it up now, but this, this he's always been certain of. "You always will be."

Steve shakes his head, but not like he's rejecting it. More like this is something he's thought long and hard about, and still can't quite process. "So are you, though. Hey, c'mere, I've got something for you."

"What, are you Superhero Santa Claus now?" But Bucky sits down on the bench beside him anyway. At least he knows it's not the shield. There but for the grace of Sam goes he.

Steve reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out what looks like a sleek, metallic wristwatch of some sort; now that he's closer, he can see that Steve's wearing something similar on his own wrist. Steve fiddles with the digital face for a moment, then passes it over to Bucky. "Ho ho ho."

Bucky accepts it, frowning. Something about it makes him think of Wakandan tech. It looks like it could somehow interface directly with his new arm, if he only knew how. "What's this?"

"Well, the full explanation is very complex and I've never bothered trying to understand it," Steve says with a wink -- he's always been _much_ better at picking up new technology than he let on to his modern friends, so that's a crock of shit right there -- "but I can tell you this much: it involves Pym particles."

Bucky goes very still. This isn't from their past, not even the recent past. Not flashy enough for Stark, way too sleek for Scott or Bruce, and who else has had access to Pym particles up until now?

"It's up to you," Steve says softly, resting his gnarled hand over Bucky's. "But this isn't the end of the line, Buck. Not even close."

"Peggy--"

Steve smiles wryly. "Always was smarter than me, by a long shot."

"Well, yeah," Bucky says, mouth going on autopilot while his brain's still stuck on _Pym particles_. "You never were very bright."

Steve's smile widens at that, improbably, and he gives Bucky's hand a quick squeeze. "Well, I did take all the stupid with me."

Bucky stares down at the wristband. Time machine. "How do I even--"

"Here -- like this. I programmed in the coordinates already. Two trips. The second will return you here." Steve's face is serious now. "It's your choice, Bucky. You don't have to use it at all, or you can make the second trip whenever you want. But I figure...I'm not the only one who's earned the chance to be selfish for once in my goddamn life."

"The first coordinates…?" Bucky's mouth is dry.

"Same ones I used," Steve tells him. "Anyway, you're good with tech. You could figure it out for yourself eventually." He gets to his feet slowly, a little creakily. But still hale. This Steve's still got plenty of years left in him. Once standing, he looks back down at Bucky, that curious smile playing across his face again. He bends down and kisses Bucky lightly, soft and sweet. "Don't get in your head about it, Buck. No matter what choice you make, it'll be the right one."

He steps back and taps his fingers across his own wristband, and is gone.

* * *

He takes the night to think it over.

The thing is, Bucky doesn't really have any other friends here. He likes Sam well enough, but doesn't really know the guy. Same goes for Bruce, or any of the other Avengers. He fought alongside some of them once -- and fought _against_ others -- but they only know him through Steve. He hasn't been around the past five years, after all; and before that, well...

A delegation from Wakanda remained behind after the battle, to help with the recovery here. He finds Shuri in the Avengers' lab the next morning and wordlessly hands her the wristband.

She studies it intently for about ten minutes, uncharacteristically silent as she twists it this way and that, and taps her fingers along the face with dizzying speed. Finally she looks up from her workbench.

"I do not think I'm supposed to have seen this," she says, her cheeks dimpling in a smirk. "Who gave it to you?"

"Steve," he tells her. When her brow furrows, he adds, "Not our Steve. The older one."

Sam and Bruce have already quietly spread the story around to the select few who need to know. Shuri's expression clears. "I see," she says, and those two words contain multitudes. She holds the wristband back out. "Why do you bring this to me? It's yours."

 _Because someone else should know,_ he doesn't say. He takes a deep breath instead. "Can you figure out how to...program it?"

"The interface is simple enough that a child could use it," she scoffs, but she's smiling. "Here -- let me show you."

It's not _that_ easy, but it's not exactly rocket science, either. It helps that Bucky's always had a good head for numbers. Steve was right -- he probably could have worked it out on his own eventually.

At the end of Shuri's impromptu lecture, she steps back and gives him a long, searching look.

"Bucky…" She hesitates as though trying to find the right words. "I have never seen anything like this before. But I can always recognize my own work."

"Yeah," Bucky says, strapping the device around his wrist. "I thought you might."

When she smiles at him again, he almost even smiles back.

* * *

He doesn't entirely understand how this time travel gig works. Bruce had explained it, to him and Sam, back when they were planning out how Steve would return all the Infinity Stones, but it didn't really take. Something about how stealing the stones out of time in the first place had created multiple alternate timelines, but returning them would loop them back into their proper place. Sure, why not? Bucky is a cryogenically-preserved centenarian super-soldier with a metal arm; he's given up the right to argue about science fiction at this point.

Steve had handed him the wristband and told him that it was his choice. And that means that whatever choice Bucky makes, it has to work out, or the old geezer never would've made it back here to tell him so.

So he doesn't use the coordinates Steve programmed in. Not quite. Give the guy a couple of weeks alone with the girl of his dreams, before Bucky crashes that party. He's earned at least that much.

* * *

It's a cute little house on a quiet suburban street, the kind of picture-perfect all-American neighborhood that might've come straight off the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. The Brooklyn boy in Bucky automatically rebels against it, feeling itchy and unwelcome. It's not the quiet that's the problem -- city kid though he might be, he'd found a powerful inner peace in stillness in rural Wakanda, and would return there in a heartbeat. It's the _facade_ of it all. At least in Brooklyn, you could see the ugly parts along with the beautiful, and always knew what you were up against; here, everything dirty and dark gets tucked away behind pristine lace curtains and hidden under perfectly manicured lawns. Gives him the creepy-crawlies. Alexander Pierce had lived in a neighborhood just like this -- well, a few steps up on the income scale, but close enough.

Is this really the life Steve's always wanted?

Bucky doesn't go inside, or make his presence known in any way. Instead he does some reconnaissance over the course of several days, skills developed across three lifetimes (a world war, a cold war, and whatever the hell you want to call what HYDRA used him for). His conclusion is that Peggy Carter doesn't actually _live_ in this pleasant little suburb; it's a safehouse.

She always was the smartest of all of them.

* * *

_I can get by on my own,_ Steve told him, once, after his mom died. Too stubborn to admit how poor he was, then, after Sarah Rogers' long illness and the funeral costs; too proud to ask for help. Like it was gonna put Bucky out somehow to share an apartment with his best friend. Like he could ever just sit back and do nothing when Steve was hurting so bad.

Bucky knows what it's like to be pushed back against a wall, no good options anywhere you look, lashing out at anyone who comes too close like some hurt animal. When all you've got the mental and physical capacity for is to _run_ , as far and as fast as you can; curl up tight in a hole and hide to lick your own wounds. It's what he did after the helicarriers went down, and in retrospect, it was a goddamn stupid decision. But he'd been too fucked up in the head to make any kinda good choices then. He'd done the best he could, that's all. Maybe if he'd sought Steve out sooner, instead of waiting to be hunted down, they'd have figured out a way to get the triggers out of his brain before someone like Zemo came along. Maybe they could've prevented the whole fallout with Stark. Or maybe not, but at least he wouldn't have been so fucking _alone_.

Now Steve's the one who's been bleeding out in front of everyone for years, and no one fucking saw it. Of course he turned tail and ran for the only safe harbor he could think of. He's exhausted and grieving, and Bucky completely understands why he came here. Respects it. Won't do a damn thing to change Steve's mind, if this is really what Steve wants.

 _I can get by on my own,_ Steve said. And he could have, of course he could have, but --

_The thing is, you don't have to._

* * *

Agent Carter works in the New York Bell Company building in lower Manhattan. Likely an SSR front, Bucky judges; he doesn't know exactly what year they founded S.H.I.E.L.D., but it's not quite this soon after the war. Even if she and Howard have already started planning it, they won't have amassed the necessary resources just yet. Doesn't really matter to him either way. He considers and then discards the idea of approaching her outside the office; while there's a unique sort of anonymity in a crowd, he doesn't really want the SSR or S.H.I.E.L.D. or whoever they are to catch wise. She's presumably managed to keep Steve a secret from them so far. No reason to complicate her life further.

Peggy's hours are fairly erratic, but she's consistent in the route she uses to commute. After work, she takes the subway to the commuter rail, then drives from the station to the safehouse. No way of knowing which train she'll be on any given evening, but Bucky's long since IDed her car, so it's just a matter of waiting.

It's a later train tonight. Good. Fewer other commuters around to deal with. Bucky doesn't bother with subtlety; he leans against her car's passenger side door, metal hand in his jacket pocket, head up and open. He'd cut his hair before making the jump, knowing the long hair would stick out like a sore thumb in 1946, but kept the beard. It's out of fashion, but not terribly unusual, and it's still too close to the war. Clean-shaven, he'd risk being recognized as Captain America's dead best friend.

She spots him from halfway across the parking lot, breaking her stride, and he tries to look as unthreatening as possible. He doesn't want to have to chase after her. After a moment's hesitation, she presses on forward, her hand slipping into her purse where he's sure there's at least a pistol. Hopefully she'll get close enough to recognize him before she uses it.

Hopefully she won't use it even after she does.

He can tell the exact instant she realizes who he is, because her steps falter again and she presses her free hand to her throat, her mouth forming the barest hint of an O. But of course it doesn't hold her back long. She crosses the remaining distance between them briskly, her expression difficult to interpret in the evening twilight.

"Sergeant Barnes," she says. Christ, _that_ sure brings him back.

He gives her half a smile. "Agent Carter."

"You know, a few weeks ago this would have given me quite the shock," Peggy remarks conversationally. "But I'm rather more willing to suspend disbelief now."

"I'm not sure what he's told you."

"Very little in terms of concrete detail." She taps her foot, looking him over with those clear, sharp eyes. "But this is hardly the best place for a chat. Would you care to go for a drive?"

It's not phrased like an order, but Bucky hops to anyway.

* * *

He expects her to take him to a public place: a diner, a bar, someplace with just enough privacy but also the implied safety of people around her. Or maybe she'll just bring him directly to the safehouse. But instead she drives along increasingly isolated back roads, ending eventually at a picturesque location along the water. She parks and kills the engine, but makes no move to get out of the car.

"Lover's lane?" he asks drily.

She lets out a faint huff of laughter. "Something like that. Anyway, it should be quiet." She turns to look him directly in the eyes. "Are you here to take him home?"

He shouldn't be surprised. For all her English gentility, Peggy has never been one to beat around the bush.

"No," he says quietly. "Not if he doesn't want to go."

She considers that a moment, then gives him a wry smile. "You know, now that I think on it, I'm not surprised at all to find you here. It's just business as usual, isn't it? Wherever one of you went, the other was sure to follow." The smile fades as she examines his face intently, and her tone turns serious. "I didn't know, Barnes. That you survived the fall."

There've been so many falls, it actually takes him a second to remember which one she's referring to. "Of course you didn't, how could you?"

"I mean," she says, "Steve didn't tell me, when he...arrived. That you were still alive."

It hits Bucky like a punch to the gut. Steve hasn't told her. Like Bucky's still dead to him; as though all of Thanos's victims are still ash. Maybe for him, they are. They weren't there for him when it mattered. Only Natasha had remained at Steve's side, these past five long years, and then he lost her, too.

(He hasn't had a chance yet to process Nat's death. Bucky had never really known Natasha Romanoff, but Natalia -- the Winter Soldier had once known Natalia very well indeed. She's the phantom ache in his chest, an empty space in his heart that he doesn't understand the shape of and now never will.)

"What _did_ he tell you?" Bucky asks. His voice is rougher than he'd like.

She sighs and stares out into the deepening evening. "Bits and pieces. That he woke up in the wrong place. That everything went to hell, because of the Tesseract and...other things like it. That there was one battle he lost, badly, and another he eventually won, but at great cost. That he's tired of war." She pauses. "That he loves me."

"All of that is true," Bucky says, when the silence stretches on a little too long.

"Of course it is." Peggy swipes her thumb at the corner of her eye, which is the only reason he notices the tears there. "He looks at me like...like I'm everything he ever dreamed of." 

She sounds wistful, and sad. Bucky watches her uncertainly. "Is that a bad thing?"

"No. But my Steve, the Steve I loved, he still remembered that I was only human."

It lands heavily. Maybe, a lifetime ago, Bucky would've covered her hand with his, tried to make a physical connection. He used to be so easy with human contact. But it's become a foreign language to him now. "He's still your Steve," he says helplessly.

"Sergeant Barnes," Peggy says, "it's been a year and a half since you both died. Eighteen months, give or take. I've been through a fair amount myself since then, I know how time can stretch. But the two of you -- it's been a great deal longer than that, hasn't it? I can see it in your faces. Even supersoldiers age, apparently," she adds, with the barest hint of a smile.

"A _lot_ longer," Bucky agrees, but his mind is spinning. "How'd you know I--"

She's able to reach out where he can't. Peggy takes his hand firmly -- his left. His metal hand. She doesn't even flinch. "No normal human could have survived that fall," she says, oddly gentle. "Arnim Zola's experiments -- they were successful, weren't they? On you, at least."

Bucky doesn't answer. He doesn't have to. She lifts his metal hand to study it more closely for a moment, then sighs and releases him.

"I'm so sorry," she tells him. "We would have come for you, if we'd known. God knows Steve tried to -- oh, it doesn't matter now." She shakes her head briskly. "Bucky." It might be the first time she's ever called him that, at least to his face. "Why come here at all, if not to take him home with you?"

He'd expected this question, but it still catches him off guard. "Because...because you're right. Where he goes, I follow. Even if he doesn't want me to. Turnabout's fair play, and all that," he adds wryly, remember how fucking _pissed_ he'd been, all those times Steve had tried to join up after Pearl Harbor. How he'd ripped Steve a new one in Italy for letting _Howard Stark_ , of all people, experiment on him. Seemed like neither of them would ever learn.

He thinks of that older Steve -- _No matter what choice you make, it'll be the right one_ \-- and what he'd told Bucky about Peggy: _Allow Barnes the dignity of his choice_. And now Peggy herself saying, _the Steve I loved, he still remembered I was only human._

"He's got the right to make his own choices. I'm never gonna take that away from him." Bucky takes a deep breath and looks her right in the eye. "But seems to me, so do you."

Peggy nods, then, and keys the ignition. The car hums back to life around them. "Thank you," she says. "I think we've kept him waiting long enough."

* * *

It wasn't always all drama and trauma with them. Bucky forgets that, sometimes -- Bucky forgets a _lot_ of things, sometimes, to be honest -- but those ordinary moments were important, too. More important than anything else.

Playing stickball in the streets when they were kids, and Steve couldn't catch the ball for shit but he actually had a good eye for _hitting_ it, and it didn't matter that he was smaller or weaker than most of the other kids 'cause it's not like he had to hit it all that hard or far. Hours of just shooting the shit together when they got older, while Steve sketched or Bucky picked his way absently through the newspaper, reading aloud the particularly strange or interesting bits. Even during the war, there were slow days, boring days spent just hanging around base while the brass hemmed and hawed over the next mission. Or hoofing it across the European landscape en route to some rendezvous point, Bucky and Dum-Dum caterwauling "Blood Upon the Risers" at the top of their lungs until even Dernier could join in at the chorus -- _gory, gory what a helluva way to die!_

Slipping into the queer bars down around the Navy Yard, not on the regular but more than once or twice, trading kisses in dark corners and once, memorably, having it off in a bathroom stall only minutes before the cops raided the place. Trying to figure out how to have sex on Bucky's creaky old mattress without either alerting the neighbors or getting skewered by a broken spring in an unfortunate place, until Steve was laughing so hard Bucky thought he might give himself a damn asthma attack. Finding excuses to touch each other during the war -- not even in a sexual way, just for the sheer human connection, reminding themselves that the other was really here, that they were both still alive.

They'd never been what you might call exclusive; couldn't afford to be, before the war. Bucky mostly dated girls because it was easy and convenient and he really did love to go out dancing, but a couple of times he'd started thinking seriously about one, and he and Steve would relax back into just a comfortable friendship for months on end. Steve had always been crap at chatting up women, but he was genuinely attracted to them in ways Bucky mostly wasn't, and on the rare occasions a girl _was_ willing to give Steve the time of day, Bucky would give him an encouraging shove and leave them to it.

Then there was the war, and Peggy Carter. She was The One for Steve, if anyone was gonna be, and who the hell was Bucky to stand in the way? So Bucky backed right the fuck off for a while. Tried to, at least, until finally Steve cornered him a few weeks later and straight up told him, "It's not a goddamn competition, Buck, it won't ever have to come down to her or you. I loved you first, jerk. She understands that."

"She caught you kissing another girl and then _shot at you_ ," Bucky pointed out.

The blush burned hot in Steve's cheeks, but he just said, "Well, sure, but that's 'cause it was Private Lorraine. Not _you_."

"You're right," Bucky said darkly. "She catches you kissing me, it'll be _me_ she shoots," and Steve just laughed and kissed him anyway.

Bucky never knew what kind of conversations they had about it behind his back, but sometimes he'd catch Peggy watching the two of them, her head tilted, with the faintest little smile playing across her face. And he never intruded upon the rare moments Steve could grab with her alone. So he figured they were square.

Besides, he never expected to survive the war. May as well take what he could get while he was still here, full of gratitude that Peggy would be there to take care of Steve afterward.

* * *

The safehouse is just as banally attractive on the inside as out. No personal touches at all. Given how Peggy wrinkles her nose ever so slightly as they step through the front door, she probably likes the place about as much as Bucky does. But God knows they've both seen far worse.

There's a lamp on in the living room, but it's otherwise empty. Steve's voice sounds like it's coming from upstairs. "Peggy?"

"Steve, darling," Peggy calls out, hanging her coat up on a waiting hook, "I've brought someone to see you."

Bucky hovers uncertainly by the door. He half expects Steve to take one look at him and kick him right back out again. But what the hell, he can handle an angry Steve. God knows it won't be the first time. In some ways, he'd always found Captain America significantly less intimidating than the scrappy little shit Steve'd been before the serum. Sure, post-serum Steve could beat the crap out of him, but knowing that, he was far less likely to _try_ , always hyper-aware of his newfound strength when it came to Bucky.

Back when he was smaller, Steve used to fight dirty as hell, and he fucking _bit_. Like a goddamned terrier.

Footsteps overhead, and then Steve appears, dressed simply in slacks and a white army tee. He stops dead at the foot of the staircase. A complex series of emotions flash across his face almost too rapidly for Bucky to read, but: not anger. Shock, disbelief, and something almost like embarrassment. 

His gaze flickers quickly to Bucky's left hand, where the dark metal of his new Wakandan arm gleams. Like he's verifying that yes, this is the Bucky he left behind in 2023, not someone from some other timeline.

"Bucky, what are you doing here?" Steve frowns, his gaze sharpening. "How did you even know how to find me?"

Bucky lifts an eyebrow. "Where the hell else would you have gone?"

"And while we're all asking questions," Peggy says, with a wry smile that doesn't reach her eyes, "Steve. Were you ever going to tell me?"

Steve sinks into a delicate-looking loveseat, scrubbing his hand across his face. When he looks up again, Bucky can finally interpret his expression: half guilt, half relief. Like someone who's been keeping a secret and _hating_ it, but now it's finally out in the open, and for all it might cost him, he's just so goddamn relieved the burden is no longer his alone.

"I'm so sorry, Pegs," Steve sighs. "I couldn't -- I didn't know how to..." He shakes his head, and looks to Bucky instead. "You never should have followed me."

"Of course he followed you," Peggy says. She sits down next to Steve and takes his hand in her own. "And he was quite right to do so."

Steve clutches her hand tightly, but he's still staring up at Bucky. "But how did you _get_ here? Even if you knew I'd come back to Peggy..."

Bucky pushes back his sleeve to reveal the wristband, which of course means nothing to either of them. "It's...I was given this. With specific coordinates."

"But...who...?"

"You," Bucky says softly. "You gave it to me, Steve."

It takes a few seconds to sink in, but Steve gets there eventually. His shoulders slump forward, and he laughs hollowly. "Should've guessed. You know, I ran into myself during the Time Heist," he remarks, seemingly out of nowhere. "He was a real pain in my ass." When he looks up again, his eyes are suspiciously bright. "I never learn, do I?"

Bucky just shrugs helplessly. He thinks he used to be a pretty smooth talker. Not anymore.

"That's what we're here for," Peggy says gently, saving them both. "Steve, my darling, I think it's time you filled me in on a few details. You told me you woke up in the wrong place -- the wrong time. What year, exactly? When do we finally find you?"

And slowly, haltingly, Steve tells her everything.

* * *

Steve never told Bucky the full story from his perspective before. They never had the time for it.

For Steve, pretty much everything from 1944 onwards has been a tale of loss. Finding friends, family, purpose, and then losing them all one by one. Peggy and the Commandos: lost in time. S.H.I.E.L.D. and the mission and security it provided: rotted from within by HYDRA. The Avengers, an awkward roughshod not-quite-family, that came together in brief spurts only to break apart again, always going their own separate ways, never really in sync, and finally splintered into fragments by Steve's own choices. Sam and Natasha, his chosen comrades, the two who mattered most: lost, one after the other. Even Tony Stark, whose relationship with Steve had been strained and fraught at the best of times -- still, Steve sincerely mourned him. And half the entire universe, gone in a snap.

And Bucky, _Bucky_ , always Bucky, over and over again, found and lost and found again and lost again in an endlessly repeating cycle, until their relationship became defined entirely by absence.

"Barnes," Peggy interrupts, when Bucky's so raw with it that he thinks he's about ready to shatter into a million pieces, "what on earth are you still doing all the way over there?"

And she reaches out where neither of them know how to, and pulls Bucky down to sit on Steve's other side. Bucky rests his hand tentatively on Steve's knee, and Steve immediately covers it with his own, twining their fingers, clutching so tightly that Bucky can feel his bones scraping together.

* * *

It's well past midnight before the words finally stagger to a stop, and it's clear that none of them are in any condition to make any sort of decisions tonight. Peggy gets wearily to her feet, swaying a little as she looks down at the two of them. After a long moment, she cups Steve's face in her hands and presses a kiss to his forehead.

"I love you," she says simply. "I'm glad you came to me. And now we all need sleep, I think." She hesitates, glancing between them, then adds, "There are some things I'll need to take care of, first thing in the morning, and honestly, I need a little space to consider all you've told me. If you think you'll be all right here, I'd like to sleep in my own bed tonight."

Steve frowns. "Are you sure you're okay to drive?"

"I'll call a cab. It'll be fine." She rubs her thumb reassuringly against his cheek. "I'll see you tomorrow, Steve, I promise."

Bucky starts to pull himself upright as well. "I can go--"

"You most certainly will not," Peggy says. "There's a spare bedroom." She glances between them, then adds, "if you need it."

Bucky has long since lost the ability to blush, but Steve's ears turn charmingly pink. Peggy just gives them both a serene smile and kisses Steve again lightly.

When she goes into the other room to call the cab, though, Bucky does follow her. He waits quietly until she finishes placing the call.

"You can stay, you know," he says, voice rough. "I won't get in your way."

Peggy sighs, leaning against the kitchen counter. "Of course not. You never did, did you? And I never got in yours." He's not sure what she reads in his expression, but whatever it is, she waves him off before he can respond. "That's not why I'm leaving," she goes on, almost gently. "I wasn't lying -- I really do need some space. It's quite a lot to take in. And as wonderful as it has been to have Steve here these past few weeks, I really do miss my own home." She smiles a little crookedly. "One of Howard's townhouses, actually. He doesn't use it, so he gave it to me and Angie -- my friend, that is."

There's a hitch in her breath before the word _friend_. Anyone else would've missed it, probably, except that it's like a mirror reflecting back Bucky's own past. He remembers the 1940s all too well, the things one could and couldn't quite say.

"Your friend," he echoes carefully, uncertain if he's understood her correctly. "She, um, knows? About Steve?"

Peggy's smile turns wistful. "The broad strokes, yes. But -- well, yes. That's one of many things I need to consider." She crosses to him and hesitates, looking him over. Then she leans up and kisses him softly on the mouth. "No matter what happens next -- thank you, Bucky. For coming back for him. I think it's what all of us needed."

* * *

The house feels somehow smaller and shabbier once Peggy is gone for the night. Steve moves through the rooms like a man in a dream, slowly turning off lights and checking to make sure all the doors and windows are locked properly. Bucky follows him upstairs to the bedroom and hesitates in the doorway. The next door down is likely the spare room Peggy mentioned. It would be much easier to say goodnight here and fall into his own bed, and hopefully a dreamless sleep.

But Steve just looks at him, eyes red-rimmed with grief and exhaustion. He holds out a tentative hand.

Bucky takes it. 

They're broken, both of them, in their own jagged pieces; but somehow, they still fit together.

* * *

In the darkness, his words muffled against the skin of Bucky's collarbone, Steve is able to say: "You know why I didn't tell Peggy you were still alive? It's 'cause I was so damn ashamed of myself. That you were alive -- that another version of you _is_ alive, here, now, and I was doing nothing at all about it."

He can admit: "I was so used to losing you, it never felt like I really got you back. I didn't think of it as leaving you -- or Sam, or anyone else. It didn't feel like there was anything left for me to leave behind."

And later, when he asks, plaintively, "Why'd you come after me, Buck?"

Bucky can tell him: "Because I _can_ live without you, Steve, if I have to -- but fuck, I don't _want_ to."

* * *

They sleep past noon, waking only at the sound of the front door opening beneath the bedroom. Peggy seems content to leave them be for as long as they need, but Bucky's ma raised him to never keep a lady waiting. They dress quickly and wordlessly, and head down to meet her.

In the end, though, there's very little left for anyone to say.

"Of course you can stay here as long as you need, to get your feet back under you," Peggy tells them both briskly, and if there's a tear caught in the corner of her eye, no one's going to mention it. "But not forever. It would only drive you mad, Steve, watching history unfold and having to restrain yourself from intervening. Or trying to solve every problem before it has a chance to arise. You know too much to ever be content in the time you left behind."

"Not to mention the lack of Google," Bucky mutters under his breath. They both ignore him, as well they should.

"I love you," Steve tells Peggy, clearly meaning it with every fiber of his being, and it's still so obviously a goodbye.

She gives him a smile that's equal parts sad and satisfied. "And I will love you always, every version of you, no matter what you've done or who you become. But Steve, _my_ Steve, is still trapped beneath the arctic ice. And I need your intel to bring him home." Her gaze flickers between the two of them, and her expression shifts into that pure, clear-eyed determination that Steve first loved and Bucky always admired. "So that together, he and I can find _his_ Bucky."

Bucky cracks a grin. It feels strange in the contours of his face, like a memory of a different time. Not a better one, exactly, or even simpler, just...another life. One he'll never quite leave behind. "Godspeed, Agent Carter."

Steve reaches out to clasp Peggy's hands in his, bending their heads close together. "Anything you need, Peggy. Anything I have to give. But are you sure--"

"Trust me to do this, darling," Peggy tells him, quiet and firm. "I can build us all a better world."

And Bucky is absolutely certain that she will.

* * *

Upstairs, in the bedroom, Steve opens a briefcase to unpack the suit that Tony Stark built. The last few vials of Pym particles. And a little case with a gleaming orange gem still tucked inside.

Bucky stares down at the Soul Stone in silence for what feels like a very long time. Finally, he wordlessly looks back up into Steve's face.

"I couldn't do it," Steve says. His voice cracks a little. "I had all of these vague notions of...I don't even know. Showing up at Vormir with guns blazing. All these half-baked arguments to make with the guardian of the stone, to bargain for Nat's life, to trade hers for mine. To beg with them, offer anything, threaten to destroy the stone myself. To _use_ it, somehow, to convince them to bring her back. Anything. And then I got there, and saw him."

"Saw who?" Bucky asks slowly. He doesn't know too much about the stones themselves, and even less about Vormir. Just that Clint and Natasha had both gone, and only Clint returned. The details all got subsumed into the greater joys and griefs of that final battle.

"It's not Clint's fault, he didn't realize," Steve sighs. "He had no way to recognize him. The guardian. It's the Red Skull."

Bucky blinks. _That_ asshole? It's almost laughable, in a way, how terrifying they'd once found him. That cartoonishly ugly face, the absurd grandeur of his plans for world domination. The Red Skull was evil, no question, but his was a childish, grandiose sort of evil. Compared to the shit Bucky's been through since.. _fuck_ the Red Skull. How the hell was he still lurking around?

He must've said some part of that aloud, because Steve huffs out a laugh. "Yeah, no kidding. But goddamn if it didn't throw me for a loop. After everything I'd just been through -- it was like the floor falling out beneath me. I just turned around and walked away. Ran, really. Straight here to Peggy. But I've been thinking about it ever since. I knew I'd have to go back and finish the job eventually. It's the last of the stones. I have to return it, or everything we fought for…"

"Yeah." Bucky runs his metal fingers across the face of the gem for a moment, considering. "Well, I was wondering where we were gonna go next. Guess I've got my answer."

Steve's been watching him intently, like he expected Bucky to scold him for leaving the job unfinished, or for having a perfectly understandable freakout when faced unexpectedly with the first enemy he ever defeated. But slowly he starts to smile. "Yeah? You gonna tag along for this one?"

"Can't shake me now," Bucky agrees. "I've got my own fancy-schmancy time travel thingamabob, I can follow you anywhere. Looks like you're stuck with me. Besides," he adds seriously. "No way in hell am I letting you trade your life for Natasha's, but this sort of shit always comes with loopholes. And now we know who we're dealing with. So let's you and me put our heads together and see if we can't come up with another way to get her back."

Steve tugs him in by the collar and kisses him deeply. "You're sure?" he asks, when they eventually come up for air. His hands frame Bucky's face, warm and strong. "You gotta be sure, Buck. I can't lose anyone again."

"I mean, I wasn't ever expecting a do-over on fighting _that_ sonofabitch," Bucky sighs, knocking their foreheads together. He smiles just to feel the shape of it against Steve's lips. "But hey, what the hell. It ain't like I've got anything better to do today."


End file.
